Chlorophylls and chlorophyllins (E140)

Chlorophylls and chlorophyllins is the colour the food industry lists as E140. In our table it is no risk identified: it takes no points off a product's score for a child.

In short

No risk identified. No regulator finding we score, so a product keeps all 33 additive points.
No child flag. Nothing below is written about children specifically, so the class is the same at every age.
2 citations from EFSA, FDA, each one below.

What Chlorophylls and chlorophyllins does to a score

A packaged food starts with 33 points for what is in its ingredient list. Chlorophylls and chlorophyllins takes no points off a product's score. Scan the pack in Sito and the score you get is the one for your own child's age, with this additive named in the reasons. How we score has the whole method.

What the sources found

Every classification in our table comes from the citations below, and nothing else. They are quoted as the source wrote them.

EFSA European Commission, 'Call for scientific and technical data on the permitted food additives E 140(i) chlorophylls, E 140(ii) chlorophyllins, E 141(i) copper complexes of chlorophylls and E 141(ii) copper complexes of chlorophyllins', published 7 April 2017 (food.ec.europa.eu)
Establishes that the single E 140 authorisation covers two separately specified additives with separate EFSA opinions and opposite outcomes: 'in Annex II to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008, chlorophylls and chlorophyllins are authorised with the same E number, E 140. However, according to Commission Regulation (EU) No 231/2012, separate specifications are defined for chlorophylls (E 140(i)) and chlorophyllins (E 140(ii)). The Panel decided to re-evaluate these two food additives separately, given their different physico-chemical properties.'
FDA 21 CFR 73.125 (Sodium copper chlorophyllin) — Part 73, Subpart A "Foods"; verified against the current eCFR structure
The only chlorophyll-derived colour additive listed for US food use is sodium copper chlorophyllin (the E 141(ii) copper complex, a separate E number from E 140); plain chlorophylls have no corresponding US food colour listing. Relevant to how a US label is read, not to the class assigned here.

Why this class

Clean current EFSA and FDA status. These rows exist so that an unfamiliar additive is never treated as a bad one: a missing row costs a product nothing, and a clean row says so with citations.

Our confidence in this row's classification is medium. Medium or low does not mean the evidence is weak; it means something about the row is still being pinned down, usually a regulatory status confirmed from one source rather than two.